Exordia

I suppose, men of Athens, you would all say you wish to have put into effect what each one considers best for the city. Quite so, but it happens that the same plan has not been judged the best by all of you; otherwise some of you would not be bidding the speaker Go on and others Sit down. Now, to those who hold the same measures to be expedient as does the one who is about to speak there is no need of a single word, for they are already convinced; but to those who think that the opposite course is for the best, I wish to speak briefly.

Unless you will listen, it is, of course, absolutely impossible to learn anything,[*](This commonplace appears also in Dem. Ex. 3, Dem. Ex. 4 and Dem. Ex. 5.) any more than if you keep quiet when no one is speaking. But if you do listen it is impossible to miss one or the other of two benefits for either, being all persuaded and of the same mind, you will be more unanimous in your decision—and nothing better than this could happen for the present emergency—or else, if the speaker be unable to make his point, you will have more confidence in the decisions already reached.

Apart from these two possibilities, there is a suspicion, and by no means to your credit, that, although you have come to the assembly under obligation to choose the best plan on the basis of what shall be said, instead, you will be found, before reaching a judgement on the basis of the speeches, to have been convinced of something in your own minds, and this so strongly that you are not even willing to hear anything to the contrary.

Perhaps some of you, men of Athens, regard me as a nuisance, speaking on the same subjects time after time. But if you scan things rightly, it is not I who shall justly bear the blame for this, but rather those who do not obey your decrees. For if those men had done at the outset what you enjoined, it would not have been necessary for us to speak a second time or, if they had complied on the second occasion, a third time. As it is, the more often you have voted what your duty demanded, the less those men, it seems to me, have been prepared to act upon it.

Previously, I confess by the gods, I did not know what was the point of the saying: Responsibility reveals the man.[*](On this topic Demosthenes quotes Soph. Ant. 175-190 in Dem. 19.247.) But now I think I could even tell another what it means. For the officials, or some of them— to avoid saying all—feel not even the slightest regard for your decrees but consider how they shall make some gain. Certainly, if it had been feasible for me to make a payment, I might have been justly rebuked for this very reason, if I chose to annoy you through balking at a paltry expenditure. But as things are, it is not feasible, as these men themselves have not failed to observe.